User blog:82.71.228.1/Morpheus got his 'facts' wrong. 25,000 BTUs? You're having a laugh!
1999! It's all of 16 years since The Matrix hit the big screen and fuelled the dreams of conspiracy theorists the world over. Everybody loves a good conspiracy theory don't they? And The Matrix is probably one of the very best and most daring ideas to ever grace the silver screen. Soulless machines using human beings as a slave-like energy source in order to further their own agenda - sounds like Conservative Party Conference week! Anyway, I love the film, the story and the idea, and for the last decade-and-a-half I have been determined to prove a thing or two about whether the entire thing could actually work in reality, or not. So now that the kind people at the Huff Post have given me this outlet to vent my ideas, I thought I'd try and lay a few ghosts to bed and get the stuff off my chest. Was Morpheus Just Part of the System? Like most conspiracy theories, there's always more to it than initially meets the eye. If you visit Matrix fan forums and film sites, you'll find plenty of people who have a variety of thoughts on who the bad guys really are and questions about whether we've been reading it all wrong for years. Unfortunately, the only way you're ever really going to know the truth is if you tie the Wachowski brothers down long enough to illicit an answer to all the crazy questions you have. And one of my biggest questions is whether our leather-clad friend Morpheus was actually who he said he was, or not. Morpheus tells Neo that the Matrix is the 'wool that has been pulled over his eyes to blind him from the truth'. But is that just another ruse? Is Morpheus just another player in the system that is used to help 'The One' on his path? Part of me thinks that, much like all the other programmes in this dystopian computer future, Morpheus is just an access port - like some kind of gatekeeper whose sole intention is to lead Neo to the 'inevitable'. It's all a bit mind-bending and mad if you ask me. Spouting Some Sort of Tosh About BTUs However, it's not only this that I take issue with. After Neo takes the red pill and Morpheus gives him the low-down on how the Matrix works, he talks about how much heat us human beings give off and poor Neo - in his 'white rabbit' in the headlights naivety - soaks it all up. 25,000 BTUs of body heat? What planet are you on pal? Sorry, but I've done a bit of work for heating companies in my time, and I can safely say that the only way a human being is going to give off that amount of body heat is if you smeared it in Deep Heat and stuck it against a radiator, a-la Withnail & I! It just can't happen, or at least it shouldn't happen. The fact is (according to Cornell University and BestHeating) humans produce about 356 BTUs/hour when they're chilling out and they're still way short when working at maximum capacity - pumping out around 3377 BTUs/hour at the very most. Basically Morpheus is a liar, or at least shockingly misinformed. To get anywhere near the output that the captain of the Nebuchadnezzar says we are capable of, you'd have to put almost 300 of those déjà vu cats together in a bag, or get around 30 suited and booted politicians together for a selfie - though the temperature of their blood could be an issue. He Must Be On Their Side All-in-all, the simple truth is this - Morpheus was wrong when he said that humans are a good source of energy - we're totally crap in all honesty. We would need around 60 hours to generate Mr Morpheus' ludicrous output and even then, we would only produce enough heat to warm the average front room for around two hours. We are very inefficient fuels. And that very fact is what has led me to finally settle on an answer to my question - Morpheus must have been part of the system; that can be the only reason he lied so blatantly to Neo. He told him 'exactly what he need to hear' from day one. Without that information, I reckon Neo would have just turned tail and done a runner - rendering the entire trilogy totally pointless. So thank you Mr Morpheus. Although your science is way off the mark, without your underhanded input, my friends and I would never have had the all-night discussions and countless violent exchanges that have shaped our lives since 1999. I salute you sir - you big fat machine loving liar you!